The camera and the press : American visual and print culture in the age of the daguerreotype / Marcy J. Dinius.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dinius, Marcy J.

Series:

Material texts.

Material Texts

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Photography in literature--United States--History--19th century.

Photography in literature.

Literature and photography--United States--History--19th century.

Literature and photography.

American fiction--19th century--Illustrations--Public opinion.

American fiction.

Daguerreotype--United States--History--19th century.

Daguerreotype.

Documentary photography--Social aspects--United States--History--19th century.

Documentary photography.

Visual communication--United States--History--19th century.

Visual communication.

Public opinion--United States--History--19th century.

Public opinion.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (317 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Before most Americans ever saw an actual daguerreotype, they encountered this visual form through written descriptions, published and rapidly reprinted in newspapers throughout the land. In The Camera and the Press, Marcy J. Dinius examines how the first written and published responses to the daguerreotype set the terms for how we now understand the representational accuracy and objectivity associated with the photograph, as well as the democratization of portraiture that photography enabled. Dinius's archival research ranges from essays in popular nineteenth-century periodicals to daguerreotypes of Americans, Liberians, slaves, and even fictional characters. Examples of these portraits are among the dozens of illustrations featured in the book. The Camera and the Press presents new dimensions of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, Herman Melville's Pierre, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Frederick Douglass's The Heroic Slave. Dinius shows how these authors strategically incorporated aspects of daguerreian representation to advance their aesthetic, political, and social agendas. By recognizing print and visual culture as one, Dinius redefines such terms as art, objectivity, sympathy, representation, race, and nationalism and their interrelations in nineteenth-century America.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Daguerreotype in Antebellum American Popular Print

Chapter 2. Daguerreian Romanticism The House of the Seven Gables and Gabriel Harrison's Portraits

Chapter 3. ''Some ideal image of the man and his mind'' Melville's Pierre and Southworth & Hawes's Daguerreian Aesthetic

Chapter 4. Slavery in Black and White Daguerreotypy and Uncle Tom's Cabin

Chapter 5. ''My daguerreotype shall be a true one'' Augustus Washington and the Liberian Colonization Movement

Chapter 6. Seeing a Slave as a Man Frederick Douglass, Racial Progress, and Daguerreian Portraiture

Epilogue. ''An Old Daguerreotype''

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Originally presented as the author's thesis (Northwestern University) under title: The camera and the pen: daguerreotypy and literature in antebellum America.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [279]-294) and index.

ISBN:

9781283898348

1283898349

9780812206340

0812206347

OCLC:

822017912